It's All Coming Back to Me Now
by braceface freak
Summary: A missing scene from the episode 'The Family of Blood'. What happens when all the memories come back to the Doctor, including the painful ones. Doctor/Rose.


_**Heya I'm back, it's been AGES hasn't it! Soz about that! Anyway here's a little one-shot, hope you like.**_

**_And I'll make it ABSOLUTELY clear. I DO NOT own Doctor Who, it's the beebs and RTD's...But maybe one day!_**

* * *

John Smith sat alone in a darkened corner of the grim, grey room staring intently and fearfully at the little, silver pocket watch clasped tightly in his hands. Long, pale fingers traced over the grooves in the watch's tarnished surface. He knew what was coming next. Covering the watch with his large hands, he held it shut in his clammy palm. This was it. Once the ancient trinket was opened he would cease to exist. John Smith would die and the Doctor would live, it didn't seem fair. And with tentative fingers he flicked open the innocent-looking object, the object that secured his death; then he waited for the inevitable to happen. A glowing, golden light spilled from the grey casing and shrouded him in an entrancing, dreamy, dancing mist; warmth crept up his arm making his skin tingle in a way that was neither pleasant nor painful. Sudden flashes of people and places burst into his mind, accompanied with whispered words and pulses of emotion, his memories.

_A dark headed woman, a name 'Susan' and the feeling of desperate loneliness and despair. The last of the Time Lords._

John gasped as the sense of isolation overwhelmed him; he remembered that the Doctor was alone, his people wiped out many, many years before. He gulped down a breath of air, trying to settle his agitated stomach, holding back the tears.

_Monsters, hundreds of them. No, not monsters, aliens from other, far-away planets. All of his journal sketches and more, bought to life. All weird, frightening and different and their strange, strange names, all so familiar and yet distant._

More memories came and left, most no more than second long glimpses of a forgotten life, a life that apparently belonged to him but that he could not recall. But they all seemed to make perfect sense he could feel his alter-ego's life returning and the traces of John Smith being dispelled to the back of his mind, he was slowly becoming no more than a fairy tale. It was unsettling to loose and reclaim yourself at the same instant.

_A tall, blue box. His home. The TARDIS. It's pulsating, blue central column and everywhere wires. How he loved it, it was the only remainder left of his home. The only place he felt truly safe._

Feelings churned like a stormy sea within him; anger, grief, joy and surprise. It didn't feel right to experience them all at once. A jolt of electricity coursed up his limbs and a wave of the strongest emotions he'd ever know hit him, making his head pound doubly hard, he though he would vomit.

"_Run." The voice belonged to him, but was not his at the same time, though how that was possible he did not know. A face blurry at first, but slowly clearing. The weight of another's hand grasped in his, a sense of change erupted in his head._

Before anything became completely and vividly clear the memory vanished, leaving behind nothing but a faint smile on the lips of Mr Smithy, or was it the Doctor. He couldn't tell anymore.

_Again her face appeared clear now, her blonde hair like woven sunshine and her smile bright enough to blind him. Even her smell was recalled, fruity and sweet and with a hint of roses. _

"_I made my choice along time ago and I'm never going to leave you."_

_Then she was falling in a room of blinding white, her scream piercing through him like a knife. He was screaming too._

The man (he no longer knew how to indentify himself) let his head fall heavily into his hands. Only pain and grief filled him now, all other emotions had been erased at the remembrance of that soul-destroying day. An over-whelming desire to end it all, to close the watch and once again forget everything burned furiously within him, but his hands would not obey. He'd come too far, the only option was to finish the task.

_A coolness was pressed against his cheek as he strained to feel her. He could. Her screams and sobs were audible to him._

_A beach appeared around him which he knew to be in Norway. She was there as well, her face wet with tears and eyes filled with pain. _

"_I love you." And then she was gone. He was left with only tears to comfort him._

A pain-ridden sob escaped the man's lips and his body shuddered as he cried. The John Smith part of him did not understand why this Doctor should live with so much horror and hurt and death in his life. The newest memories came quickly, and were less painful, although a dull ache stayed in his heart through them all.

_A ginger woman in a wedding dress, surrounded by water and flames and screams. _

_A hospital, a storm and upwards rain._

_The globe theatre filled with witches, crystal balls and words._

_A face in a jar, a strange and empty world of tall buildings and death and singing._

_Daleks and the cult of Skaro, names that bought back horrid memories of war and genocide._

_A tuxedo and a slap from a worried mother, being chased by a huge, mutated monster._

_Heat, sweat, steam and oil, fire burning through his flesh, "Burn with me."  
_

In a matter of seconds the flickering images and sound s suddenly stopped. The world fell back into place around him, blood-shot eues re-focused and his brain registered his whereabouts. Running his digits through his hair he flipped shut the dead watch and dropped it carelessly into his pocket. He wiped away the final remnants of the tears he had shed, hoping no one would notice their faint tracks.

The Doctor was back and it was time to save the world.


End file.
